Whispers
by Self-Inflicted Insanity
Summary: Wanda considers her brother and their sibling relationship, while Pietro tries to muster up the courage to talk to her. (Takes place before Wanda got brainwashed. Brotherly and sisterly love/hate.)
1. Wanda

**AN: So, this is my first Evo fic. I binge-watched the show a month or so ago, and since I've reading stories in this fandom. I honestly didn't think I was going to write anything for it, but the inspiration for this struck me out of nowhere last night, and it just happened. (I listened to the song "Black and Gold" by Sam Sparro on repeat for a total of 75 times while writing it, lol.)  
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**This is basically a character study on Pietro and Wanda and their sibling relationship. It's heavily set in Evo, but my interpretations of the characters are somewhat influenced by their characters in the comics.  
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**This takes place sometime after Wanda joined the Brotherhood, but before she had her memories changed by Mastermind. **

**The first chapter is from Wanda's POV (third-person limited), the second chapter will be from Pietro's POV. **

**Rated T for swearing. **

**I don't own Evo or the characters. **

* * *

**Wanda**

* * *

It was nothing more than a whisper, really. Just a whisper. Nothing more, not much less.

If anything, it was hardly a whisper. It was more of a breath, an exhalation of air that thin lips (thin lips so often twisted up into a smirk or sneer) formed into the shape of a single word.

"_Wanda?" _

It was nothing more than a whisper, a breath. A breath like a wisp of gelid winter wind that whipped through the streets with all the biting force of a young kitten. A breath, a sigh, a timid breeze that rustled the grass that was gilded with glittering white crystals of frost that glinted coldly in the pale winter sunlight under the clear, icy blue sky.

Everything about him was like winter, and winter was like everything about him. Pale like his skin, white like his hair, frigid blue like his eyes, angular like his features, biting like his voice. There was nothing warm about him; not a thing. Even on those rare, rare occasions that he cried, there was no ruddy flush to his cheeks, just clear tears trailing down his face like rain from his darkened eyes. Even his lips held no color, unless he bit them till they bled, a bright, brilliant red.

Everything about him was cold, even his body temperature.

Even before his powers emerged, he always ran cold, colder than normal, his quick metabolism that turned calories into energy rather than heat evident long before his speed was. If you placed a hand over his forehead, or even just held his hand, you'd swear he had hypothermia.

He didn't, of course. He never did. She didn't think she could ever remember him even getting sick, no matter he was so cold, rubbing his numb hands together, breathing on his fingers with breaths that hardly helped, hastily putting on gloves and shoving his hands into warm jacket pockets, shivering still.

Not an ounce of extra fat on him, nothing but lithe muscle; as long as he was moving he stayed warm, but as soon as he stopped he turned cold.

When they were little and it was chilly out, he would shiver and try to warm his freezing hands that were turning slightly purple, and she would take his hands in her own warm ones and rub life back into his fingers. He was never warm enough, but with her he was never truly cold (and with him she was never truly alone).

He loved the heat. When he was comfortable outside in pants and a long-sleeve shirt, she was inside in the cool cellar wearing shorts and a tank-top.

He loved the summer that kept him out of school and he loved the heat that kept him from shivering. But he hated the harsh sunlight that burned his pale skin, he hated the hot spotlight that shone on his white hair, and he hated dealing with stupid scalding emotions that threatened to destroy his cool demeanor, melt it enough that it would crack and shatter into pieces.

She was heated passion, emotion, anger; he was cool and calculating thought. She was the brilliant and ardent sun, prone to violent solar flares; he was the silver and mercurial moon (except that the rabbit there was running). She was crazy and he was lunatic.

They had communication problems. She couldn't reign in her emotions, couldn't control them and wrestle them into words; he couldn't slow down his thoughts enough to catch them and phrase them into coherent sentences. She was too strong, and didn't know when to stop before someone got hurt or something got destroyed; he was too fast, and didn't know how to slow down and wait for anyone to catch up. Her feelings changed too violently; his changed too frequently. She was daredevil, and he was devil-may-care.

The Lion and the Unicorn.

"_Wanda?"_

It was nothing more than a breath.

He breathed so quickly, now. His heart beat so fast. His emotions flitted across his features so swiftly they couldn't be seen unless he stuck them there as a mask. He would run and run and run and never look back.

She wondered if, now that he had his powers, the world moved so slowly and he was able to move so quickly that he honestly thought he could outrun it, that he could outrun everything.

She almost laughed, because she knew he couldn't. No matter how far, no matter how fast, no matter how long he ran, the world would always catch up to him and bite him in his stupid little ass, because he couldn't run forever and eventually he had to stop. He was stupid, and he was a jerk, and a douche, and an asshole, and a there really was no kinder way she could think to put it.

But he was her brother. He was her brother, and he'd watched her get taken away, and he'd done nothing. Not that he could have done anything to keep her from getting taken away, not at that age, not against their father, not when his superspeed hadn't even fully developed.

But he could have at least cried. He could have screamed, he could have yelled, he could have made their father a little bit miserable for locking her up there and separating them.

He didn't have to just stand there quietly and look down.

But then, Pietro didn't cry, and he didn't scream, and he didn't yell, and he didn't like fighting fights he knew he would lose.

He used to cry. When they were really young, he would cry whenever she would cry, even as he asked her why she was sad and tried to wipe her tears away.

He didn't cry anymore, and neither did she.

She saw herself in her brother a lot, sometimes, and it scared her because in her brother she also saw their father, and that meant her father could be seen in her, and for that she hated herself, and for that she hated her brother.

He father, though, she didn't hate—her father she _loathed_ with every fiber of her being and wanted him dead; dead, dead, dead and gone, gone, _gone. _She wanted her father gone so he couldn't hurt her anymore, and so he couldn't manipulate her brother, and so he couldn't drive them apart and _ruin_ them, ruin them like he already and had and like he continued to do.

She hated her brother. She hated him for not being able to do anything when she was taken away, and she hated him for not being able to stand up to their father, and she hated him for still loving her no matter how many times she used her hex power to smash him into walls and out windows.

But he was her brother, and she didn't want him dead. There was still life in those cold, cold blue eyes, if you looked hard enough. If you paid enough attention, you could almost sometimes spot real feelings there before they disappeared like jackrabbits into the brush, and his face was twisted in a façade, some comic exaggeration of what he figured he was expected to feel, and how he figured he was expected to react.

When they were younger she used to watch his masks come and go, fascinated. She used to aspire to be an actress, a long time ago, before her mutant powers developed. But she'd never been very good at acting, at pretending to be something she was not. She couldn't hide or control her emotions.

But even back then, he had been good at acting. He'd been really good. It was almost scary.

He acted one way to their father, one way to their teachers, one way to the other children, another way when it was just her. She liked to think that he was the real him when he was with her, but she supposed now she could never be sure. But they used to trust each other; they used to be able to trust each other.

She didn't trust him, now, and as far as she could tell he didn't trust anyone.

"_Wanda?" _

It was nothing more than a breath, but it still caught in his throat. He'd actually waited several beats before trying again, which was wholey unlike him.

He was a chatterbox. He didn't pause. He didn't stop to think. He was all _go, go, go, _and he didn't like being caught up to.

Number one, he always had to be number one. Nobody could touch him or get near him.

A ghost, a phantom, a demon, off in the distance, a slender body too fast to see.

_Tag, you're It! _

Gone, gone, racing, fall down and scrape a knee. Blood on the sidewalk and holes in the soles of shoes. Just as long as you're never It, right?

She'd gone into his room, once, when he was off at school. His drawers were filled with jeans with holes in the knees, his closet filled with worn-out shoes.

She'd taken the shoes, tied the laces together, and used her hex bolts to toss them over telephone lines throughout Bayville.

He'd come home laughing. She'd almost zapped him, except that the sound was so familiar—not the derisive snickering he usually did now, but authentic, bubbling laughter that had his entire body shaking like he was going to vibrate into nonexistence, a sound that she hadn't heard for years and hadn't realized she'd missed.

The laughter almost hadn't sounded cold.

But he was still winter, winter all the fucking time, and she ended up zapping him anyway.

He'd deserved it, for making her feel for a moment almost like she didn't utterly hate him.

The stupid spaz. He'd fallen down on his ass, face one of comical surprise before he'd started laughing again, and when her lips had twitched upwards she'd quickly forced her face into a furious frown and used her powers to toss him out the open window.

She told herself it was an accident that he'd landed on the grass, and that she'd been aiming to throw him into the street.

It's not like he would have gotten run over or anything—not when he was so much faster than the cars.

He'd mentioned, once, when he and Lance were having an argument because Lance wanted him to get in the damn car, but he wanted to run, he'd mentioned that for him it was like cars practically standing still.

She had no idea how he got through the school days, when he could hardly sit still for five seconds.

Sometimes, she almost wanted to ask him to carry her somewhere, rather than her having to ride with the rest of the Brotherhood.

Maybe, if she told him that she just couldn't stand to be around Toad any longer, and that being around the bug-eating mutant in a confined vehicle for the duration of the car ride would make her snap and kill somebody, then he would do it.

But really, she wanted to feel what it was like to travel at Quicksilver speed. Was the world an indistinguishable blur? Just streaks of color? Did lights bleed the way they did at night when you squint your eyes and look through your lashes? Is it even possible to keep your eyes open with the wind whipping against your face? Did you feel free? Was it like flying? Did you actually transcend time and space and leave the world behind?

She wanted to know why he loved running so much. If he could just keep running, running and running forever without stopping, would he?

If he could, would he leave her behind?

"_Wanda? Please... talk to me." _

His cool voice was nothing more than a breath, and she wondered how he could even tell she could hear it, it was so soft. A moth fluttering by her ear on pallid wings, wings that tore so easily, sending the creature down, down, down, a pathetic little ghost.

"_I know you're awake_," came his voice from her doorway. Why had she left her door open again? _"Please." _

Oh, right, she couldn't keep her door closed at night because it was too dark and reminded her of being trapped in the Asylum. The Asylum she'd been locked up in and her brother hadn't even cried.

"Dammit, what is it?!" she snapped, rolling over in bed to glare at his slender figure that was silhouetted in the doorway. She couldn't see his face. He was just flat black, a shadow (he was always Magneto's shadow, wasn't he?), the hall behind him lit a dark blue shade from the slivers of moonlight that drifted in from the hole that had been broken through the roof when Fred had accidentally thrust the vacuum cleaner straight through the ceiling.

"_I..." _His voice did not raise above that wintry whisper. _"I just wanted to say..." _

"Pietro, it's the middle of the night!" she growled at him, watching as his dark form seemed to shiver at superspeed, blurring at the edges like he was airbrushed there.

"_I'm sorry." _

His words were nothing more than a breath, a little hitch in his throat.

And then the shadow was gone.

She rolled onto her back and glared up at the ceiling, willing herself to fall asleep and not think about how her brother hated apologizing and it took all his stupid guts to swallow his pride and say something even as simple as 'I'm sorry.'

It had only been a breath, after all. She'd probably misheard. He probably hadn't even said anything.

But even if he had, apologizing wasn't going to fix anything. They couldn't be fixed. And he could go to hell, for all she cared.

She hated him.

Rolling over onto her stomach, she buried her head in her pillow and tried not to scream.

* * *

**AN: Wanda strikes me as the poetic type. **

**[EDIT 07/03/2016]: **So, I'm not that good with science stuff, but I'd originally figured that, because of Tommy's superspeed, he had a high metabolism, and that therefore he should be warmer than an average human, right?

But then I took a look at the information provided by the Marvel wiki on Quicksilver's (and thus Speed's) superspeed physiology, and I couldn't make sense of everything so I took it to my physiology teacher to ask him about it.

One of the things written under Quicksilver's speed physiology was that: "He metabolizes an estimated 95% of the caloric energy content of foodstuffs (normal humans use about 25%)."

So, apparently normal humans only metabolize around 25% of the caloric energy they intake because the rest is converted into heat. Therefore, the speedsters having 95% of their caloric energy going to muscle contraction would mean that only 5% is converted into heat, so they'd have a harder time keeping warm and would probably have to keep moving all the time when somewhere cold. And this of course also means that it takes a lot for speedsters to break a sweat, and that they can run through deserts and tropics and such without dropping from heat exhaustion.

I actually asked my physiology teacher about this a few years ago, it just took me a while to go back to this story and change it.


	2. Pietro

**This chapter is from Pietro's POV (third-person limited). The run-on sentences are completely intentional. **

**Last chapter was past-tense, because that felt better for writing Wanda for some reason, but this chapter is present-tense, because that felt better for writing the speedster.  
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* * *

**Pietro**

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There's an analogue clock in the kitchen of the Brotherhood house, although it's an hour and forty-seven minutes slow, and nobody ever looks at it anyway.

Clocks have never made sense to the speedster. Hours pass between each second, and sometimes, at night when the others are asleep and everything is quiet, so much time passes between the seconds that he forgets about the loud analogue clock, and each _tik _and _tok _surprises him, causing him to startle and nearly jump out of his skin.

_Tik, _goes the clock, and Pietro leaps into the air, horripilation all over his body, slapping his hands over his mouth so he won't shriek and wake everyone else up.

That stupid clock! He's just about had it! Nobody would ever notice it was missing, if he were to take it down from the wall and smash it against the ground, maybe stomp on it a little bit, destroy the time-telling object that doesn't tell _his _time, but rather the time of the rest of the slow world that was filled with snails, and even when he was the only one awake he has to be reminded of the fact that he's a freak even amongst his fellow mutants, that the world is so incredibly boring and frustrating and everyone is always telling him to slow down, but they don't understand, they _can't_ understand what it's like when in order to move like all of them he has to pretend he's moving in slow motion, and how in order to get them to understand him he has to draw his words out for hours and his sentences out for weeks, and sometimes he has to draw things out and explain for _years _because people are so slow in understanding.

God, why are they so slow? School days last for fucking centuries, and the work is so dull and boring and he understands it all already, so why does he need to do the stupid homework?

His sister doesn't have to go to school, she's so lucky, lucky lucky lucky, even though she isn't 'cause she was locked up in that Asylum for eons, billions upon billions upon billions of years, locked up in a cell in a straightjacket, and how come she isn't completely insane? Because well, she _is_ insane, but all things considered she isn't _that_ insane.

He'd been locked up in jail for a single night, and he'd still been able to run around and around and around the cell and yet he'd been just about ready to start screaming and tearing his hair out and banging his head against the wall until everything went black, black as Wanda's hair, and oh god how did he leave her there for so long?! If only he could have done something, anything, if only—

_Tok. _

_AGH! The stupid clock! _It's too torturous to waste smashing, maybe if he takes it and runs it over to the X-Mansion, sticks it in that geek Cyclops's room, hah! See how he likes having a stupid loud clock ticking and tocking all the fucking time! Maybe he would hide the clock, too, so Cyclops would have no idea where the sound was coming from, and had to find it before he could fall asleep or even have a good think, with the stupid sound of seconds passing making him realize just how short his life really is.

Life is short, Pietro knows, even if he feels like he's lived ages longer than everyone else. Time is passing, passing like quicksilver through their fingers, and they're wasting so much of it, all the time, silver mercury down the drain, drip drip drip, a waterfall, a torrent, a shower of rain, curtains of it, lightning in the sky lighting up Wanda's dark blue eyes and her little grin as she watched the skies rent apart by lurid zig-zags of light that made the clouded sky glow purple, and the lightning was the color of Wanda's magic and Pietro wonders if that was why she'd always enjoyed thunderstorms so much, even before she got her powers, because the thunderstorms were as wild and crazy as she, and just as hard to be controlled.

Impossible to control, except that Wanda had gotten locked up, and Pietro hadn't been able to watch her get taken away kicking and screaming, and Magneto said that she'd be back soon and that she'd be all better, but he lied, he lied lied lied he's a fucking liar because he left her there for billions and billions of years, and not a day had gone by when Pietro didn't feel her absence like someone had removed part of his heart and he wasn't whole anymore and he couldn't feel and he felt cold cold cold, colder than he'd ever felt even standing outside in the rain or making snowangels on the frosty grass while his sister shrieked at him that he was an idiot and he was going to get hype-o-them-ia and he was already shivering.

Back and forth, back and forth, Pietro paces through the kitchen and the living room, and he can feel Wanda there in the house, she's there and she's alive, and maybe she isn't well, but she's out of that Asylum place, and she also hates him but that doesn't really matter because she's free, and if she hates him and zaps him and throws him around with her hex magic that's okay because he deserves it, he really, really does, and—

_Tik. _

Pietro's so startled that when he jumps he hits his head on the doorway into the kitchen.

_Ow, _he thinks as he scowls and rubs his head, glaring at the stupid damn analogue clock that's ticking away every second he's wasting here pacing the house feeling guilty and awful and not liking it at all and wanting to say something to Wanda and maybe apologize even though he knows it probably won't do anything, but it's better than nothing, right? And after everything Wanda's been through he wants to be there for her, he really does, but she's so strong and she doesn't seem to need anybody, and even though he knows she does, he knows that she'd never admit it, and she'd never seek friendship from him, would she? Things are fucked up between them and it's his fault, it's all his fault.

It doesn't matter that the day his superspeed fully developed, the first thing he tried to do was run to the Asylum, only, he got lost and Magneto came and found him and brought him forcefully back, and only a few days later sent him away to a foster home, getting rid of him, too.

And he feels like a puppet with strings, dancing to Magneto's tune, and he can't break free, he can't cut these strings, can't run from them—they just pull him back, these metal strings, and he's bound up and he's gagged and oh god, he wants his father to look at him and see a son, see someone worth loving and being proud of, but he knows that will never happen, he knows it in every cavity of his swiftly pumping heart, the beat is in his ears, and he may march to his own tune—a tune so much faster than anybody else's—but he still dances to Magneto's song, and why does he want what he knows he can never have?

Why?

Magneto will never love him, and Wanda will probably never forgive him, and he's got all the time in the world but it's not enough, it's never enough, it won't be enough to outrun this, to outrun those jaded eyes and the sound of his heart crumpling like tinfoil every time his sister glares at him in hatred and tells him he's just like his father.

And he loves her, he does, and he wants to tell her so, but oh god he's a coward, isn't he? He can't tell her, he can't he can't he can't and oh god he's so incredibly pathetic and he hates it hates it hates it he hates himself he—

_Tok. _

He jumps, the noise like a bullet in the silence, piercing through the clutter in his head, so much clutter, a fucking hurricane of shit and what the hell, you only live once, right? How great of a death would it be to be killed by your crazy sister after you tell her that you love her? Ha! He should get it on videotape, except that he doesn't have a camera, and he doesn't feel like wasting the time to go steal one, and when he dashes over to the window and glances outside, everything's dark except the streetlights, but all the windows in all the houses are dark, so that means that everybody else in the town is probably asleep, and is it really that late at night? Or early in the morning, or whatever? Whatever, right? He doesn't care about the fucking time, it doesn't mean anything to him, he doesn't feel like sleeping right now, he can't sleep right now, and he did try but he got bored with that quickly and got up, and how long has he been pacing down here jumping every time a stupid second goes by?

Just get over it, Pietro, he tells himself, there's no time like the present. There's no time, no time, no time, you're a mutant and you're a soldier and you're a pawn, and who knows when you'll die?

And everybody says that it's not the things that you do in your life that you regret, it's the things that you didn't do, so just swallow you stupid damn pride already! God, why is that so fucking hard?!

The stars are stationary in the sky and perfectly still, and he watches for a moment, wondering why people think that they twinkle, and whether he would mind if somebody called him twinkle-toes, and maybe he'd hit them with the closest object of hitting-size within reach and maybe he wouldn't, and isn't that Orion he sees up there? Orion was a hero, wasn't he? Facing a bear, was it? Or a dragon? He doesn't remember, and he doesn't particularly care, but he kind of wishes he had that hero's courage, now, because his stomach is churning like a superspeed blender, and he thinks he's going to be sick, oh god, he is definitely going to be sick, and so he rushes up the stairs even as the stupid clock goes _tik _and he trips and nearly falls from the noise slamming through the silence that was pooling in his ears.

It's so quiet, he thinks, as he lurches into the bathroom and clutches the edge of the sink, realizing that he's not going to be throwing up after all, the nausea is already going away, and now it's all gone, and well, he's already on the second floor, so he might as well just get his apology over with now.

Seriously, why is this so fucking hard?! How hard can it be to tell your sister that you're sorry and that you really do love her? How hard can it possibly be?!

He stands in the doorway—the door's wide open, he doesn't even have to push it—looking into the dark room at his sister's form curled up in bed.

"_Wanda?" _he hardly dares to whisper.

She's facing away from him, but he can tell that she isn't actually asleep, like she's pretending to be, and he can't help but wonder how long she's been awake, and whether she's managed to get any sleep at all, and whether she would be able to, and he wished she could make everything all better but he can't, it's not his superpower, and he's pretty sure that, along with superspeed, his mutant power is fucking everything up and making everybody hate him, because he does it both purposefully and accidentally, and he wishes it was as easy to hate his dad as it is to be hated by everybody. Wouldn't that be great, if he could cut those damn metal strings and see how it is to dance to his own song?

Dancing, dancing, he took ballroom dance class last semester, and he remembers that Wanda took some ballet lessons when she was younger, and that she really loved it, and he wonders if she'd still be interested in taking ballet, but then figures that probably wouldn't be a good idea with her temper and her powers, although it might help her, he doesn't really know, but she used to have this pair of red ballet shoes that she loved and she would dance around the house in, and she had a matching tutu, and she would make him help her put her hair in a bun because Magneto wouldn't.

And Magneto was just Magneto, now. When did that happen? When they were little, the used to call him Dad, and then, Pietro remembers, after Magneto sent Wanda away, he started calling him Erik, and then Magneto had insisted on being addressed as Magneto, and maybe that was when Magneto truly became the Master of Magnetism, so called Savior of the Mutant Race, rather than Pietro's dad.

And maybe yeah, he wouldn't mind if Magneto died, but he didn't want Wanda to kill him—he didn't want Wanda to become a murderer.

He's still watching her, and she hasn't hardly moved. Except for her breathing, which is slow, slow like everybody else's, and especially slow during rest, and it's so slow Pietro can hardly even register the movement, and sometimes it's like the entire world is dead except for him, and he's the only thing alive and he's running through all these corpses, and they don't see him, their eyes glassy as they stare straight through him and out the other side while never seeing him, never registering him, and he's stuck in a world full of zombies, zombies, and they're all out to eat his brains, tear him up and poke him and prod him and use him and turn him into a weapon, and oh god, everybody's dead except for Wanda.

"_Wanda?" _he whispers again, because he knows that she can hear him, and he really, really wants to talk to her, and it took him so long to get his shit together and come up here to say what he wants to say, and he's not going to leave now.

At least he can't hear the clock up here, not with Wanda's soft breathing, that's mostly steady but not completely so, he thinks, it's kind of hard to tell, but he can tell that she's thinking and he can practically feel the emotions rolling off her, and most of them are negative and he feels like he's about to be steamrolled by them, squashed like a snake under a tire, blood and bones and scales on the road, and he'll be dead, dead, dead, even more dead than all those zombies who don't know what it's like to be alive and to see everything all the time and move faster than cars and faster than the wind, and one day Pietro would really like to race the X-Men's Blackbird—wouldn't that be fun?

He grins slightly at the thought for a moment, before the smile fades away again, because Wanda is still stubbornly ignoring him, and he's really trying to wait and be patient, but god, he's been standing here for minutes now, hasn't he? Hasn't this been minutes? He can't really tell, but he's trying to give her time and not rush or bother her too much, but he really wants her permission to talk to her before he tells her what he really wants to say, but oh god, if that doesn't happen soon he's going to lose all the courage that he mustered up, and he's not going to be able to tell her, and maybe he'll die before he gets the courage again, and he'll have never told her, and she'll have always hated him and have never known that he doesn't hate her.

Because she probably thinks he hates her, doesn't she? That he doesn't care? She couldn't be more wrong, and he wants to tell her so, he really does, but he doesn't even know the words and he's standing here waiting for her to acknowledge him, but she's not, and ugh he thinks might be sick again. He makes himself sick, how pathetic is that? He wants to throw himself up, vomit up his stupid pathetic self till Pietro's all gone away, and he can be somebody better, and he probably shouldn't be having these thoughts, but he can't really help it, and everybody has these sorts of thoughts sometimes, right?

Because Pietro's perfect, and he knows it, and he loves himself for it, he does, he's handsome and his hair is gorgeous and he loves the wings that sprout from either side of the widow's peak on his forehead, and widow's peak is such an ugly term, but what else is he supposed to call the V-hairline thing he has going on? And he wants to be the best, but he knows he's not, and he can't look at his own reflection without seeing a bit of Magneto there, and he kind of wonders why that doesn't bother him as much as it probably should, but he knows he has Magneto's bearing and Magneto's strong presence, and Magneto's trait of being an utter asshole, too, and he hates his father but he still kind of loves his father, and he really can't help but admire Magneto sometimes, he just hopes that he can be better. He really does, he wants to be, he doesn't want to fuck up everybody the way his father has, and he wants to make it up to Wanda but he has no idea how, and he's lost and he's clueless and he hates it more than anything, except maybe Evan Daniels, because Evan is the stupidest, most jerkish person on the planet and Pietro really does not want to think about him right now.

"_Wanda?" _he whispers again, and he tries not to sound too desperate.

Because he wants to tell Wanda that she's perfect, and that he loves her, and he's sorry, and he's never going to let her down again, except that the very last part would be a lie, and she would know and think that everything was a lie, but it's not, it's really not, because there's nobody he loves more than his sister, and, he realizes, his sister is probably the only person that he's ever loved, the only person he loves, and likely the only person he ever will, and even if she doesn't love him now and she'll never loved him again, she used to love him, and is probably the only person who ever has, and he still loves her more than anything, and that that would sound really weird to anyone else, but people are perverts, and he doesn't love her like that, he loves her like a _sister,_ dammit, she's his best friend—or at least she was, but now she hates him, and she's so distant, and maybe nothing will ever repair their relationship, but—she's his opposite and she's his complement and he thinks she's kind of the other half of his soul or something, because he feels empty, and this all sounds so incredibly stupid and sappy in his head, and he thinks maybe he's insane, or something, maybe he's crazy like Wanda, because everyone tells him he's crazy.

A lunatic, the moon shone through the window and bleached his hair white, leeched out his soul, and he's just a ghost now, isn't he? Just a ghost—he doesn't know, but it feels like there's a machine gun in his head, and the world is blurring and looking like an impressionist painting, and ugh stupid stuff he learned in art class slipping into the vocabulary of his thoughts, how embarrassing, one might think he actually liked school or something.

Actually, art class was alright, because he didn't have to wait quite as much, and there was stuff to do with his hands and keep him busy for a bit, rather than just being lectured at, and he thinks maybe it would be fun to take mechanics shop with Lance, but when he brought it up Lance told him no-fucking-way, because Pietro would just blow something up. Besides, Pietro realizes, mechanics would be boring anyways, because there's not machine that could be made that could ever be faster or better than him.

"_Wanda?" _he whispers again, and he thinks that maybe she twitched slightly, and maybe she'll turn around and look at him so he can tell her what he wants to say and she can see that he's not lying.

There's moonlight shafting in through her window, and it's landing on the foot of her bed, and when her feet move slightly under the covers hope swells within him, only to plummet again when she still doesn't move, and okay, at this point, he really just wants to see her face, or hear her voice, or something, even if she's glaring daggers at him or yelling at him to go away or threatening to kill him or tell him that she hates him, he really doesn't care so much at this point, because negative attention is better than no attention, and he never could stand being ignored.

But she's still ignoring him, and he's been trying to be patient—and really, for him, he thinks he's doing a incredibly admirable job—but he's starting to feel a bit desperate now, and his heart has hummingbird wings he's sure of it, and his soul is being pierced with that thin hummingbird beak over and over, and he's filled with stars that are twinkling—shining with a gleam that's varying repeatedly between bright and faint, and he thinks he understands what 'twinkle' means now: 'twinkle' is just a visual form of a throbbing pain, and he knows what a throb feels like, so if a star feels itself throbbing then maybe that's why they appear to be twinkling, and shit, he's about to go nova like a star here, stupid science stuff getting into his vocabulary now, and maybe if he goes supernova he'll just explode and collapse into a blackhole and be nothing, nothing, a perfect bit of nothing, because nothing is perfect, right, so if he wants to be perfect—?

And dammit, thinking about the word 'perfect' just got a whole bunch of really stupid pop love songs stuck in his head, which is fucking annoying, and he wants to turn his brain off, and come on, there's gotta be an 'off' switch hidden in the mess somewhere, right? Heh, he wishes. Stupid fucking awful cheesy pop love songs that he only knows because Lance was practising them on his guitar because he was going to sing them for Kitty, only he wisely changed his mind and hasn't done so, because he might be alright on guitar, but his singing voice is really quite atrocious, supercalifragilisticexpialadocious—and now Pietro has _that _song stuck in his head, this is so incredibly stupid! He just wants to talk to his twin and she's just ignoring him and making him suffer here, and he doesn't deserve this, does he?

"_I know you're awake_," he whispers, and oh god is he desperate now. He'll even resort to begging, now, just please Wanda talk! _"Please." _

"Dammit, what is it?!" Wanda snaps as she rolls over in bed and glares at him, expression dark and scathing, all his confidence and bravery is leaving him, and his feet are getting cold and he wants to run away, now. He wants to run away.

"_I..." _he whispers, forcing himself to stay, trying to force the words out of his mouth, but they're getting tangled up somewhere on the pathway between his brain and his tongue, and he's choking on them and can't quite get them out. _"I just wanted to say..." _

"Pietro, it's the middle of the night!" she snarls, and he's shivering now, but it's not just that he's cold, it's that his usually silver tongue has turned to lead and he's starting to panic, because there's so much he wants to tell her, so much he wants to say, but he can't, he doesn't know how, and he knows that it will never, ever ever ever be enough, and he's too far gone, and she's too angry and hurt, and he's so, so incredibly—

"_I'm sorry," _he gasps out, quick and quiet, and just the effort of whispering those two words leaves his throat feeling raw and mutilated, and oh god why did he think this was a good idea again?

Wanda's not going to believe him and she's going to kill him, and so he's running away before she even has the ability to process what he said, if she even heard him at all, because she might not have—he hardly heard himself over his screaming whirlwind of thoughts, and as he runs outside and throws himself down on the dew-covered lawn, staring up at the stars, and he wishes idly that there would be a meteor shower because meteor showers are actually kind of interesting.

But he'd also settle for a shooting star.

Or then again, he thinks as he gets back up to his feet, maybe he'll just run and run and run until dawn finally comes, and he can go to school and be distracted enough that his mind won't drive him into absolute lunacy.

He shoots off, like a shooting star, he thinks, and grins, wondering if maybe he can wear out another pair of running shoes.

And then he's running, and everything is perfect and crystal clear, and his heart is pounding in his ears and his breaths are filling his lungs and his feet are murdering the pavement and the wind is clawing at him and his arms are pumping and he places one foot in front of the other and keeps his eyes on the path he's taking, memorizing it for the return trip, and he doesn't have to think about anything else.

Unseen, unheard, unfelt, unreal, he becomes nothing; nothing at all.

He's alive and everything is perfect.

* * *

**AN: So yeah, I tried to make him more of a sympathetic character than the show did, but to still keep it reasonable to the show and not too idealistic.****  
**


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